email kills your days? U need a strategy!

This is an amazing idea that has assisted me in saving at least one full working day per month (if not two) and a lot of anxiety. As for most of us, a lot of my working time is spent facing the multiple email clients that I use. A mix of business and personnal emails haunt me daily!

You too have surely felt that there is a time in the day that is easier for you to handle work. During this time you can do the job in peace and produce much more efficiently. During that time in the day emails fly….!I felt in sync with the idea in the following article mainly because of this fact.

I read this in hubspot.com today (written by Mike Renahan 2 years ago exactly) and I really believe it is great! (of course, my comments in blue depict where I have some different views)

According to Radicati, the average businessperson sends and receives a staggering 121 emails a day — and that number is expected to swell to 140 emails per day in two years. Spending time thinking about 121 emails curbs your ability to concentrate on the important tasks you need to accomplish.

The Ingenious Email System for Avoiding Email Overload
The answer is easier than you think: Start batching your emails. By reading and responding to your emails only twice a day, you’ll allow yourself time to be productive while simultaneously ensuring you never miss an important note.

Entrepreneur Tim Ferriss developed this strategy when he found he wasn’t being as productive as he could be. Instead of accepting email as an unfortunate but unavoidable time suck, Ferriss decided to take action. He figured out that if he only checked email twice per day, and let everyone know that was his plan, his inbox would become a lot more manageable.

Turns out, he was right. Here’s how to get started with Ferriss’ email batching system.

1) Monitor your email for one day — without responding.

(difficult but can be done)
By ignoring email for one day and simply monitoring your inbox to see when it’s busiest, you get a clear picture of when you need to check messages. Log into your account once every hour and record how many emails are in your inbox. (Note: Feel free to do this longer than one day to get a larger sample size.)

(you need to really avoid sending any emails as this creates email responses and changes the workload)

2) Make a note of peak hours.
Once you have a baseline number of emails you receive every hour, identify the two hours during the day when your inbox is most active. Do you see a jump from zero emails to 22 at 8 a.m.? Or do a majority of your emails arrive between noon and 1 p.m.?After I observed my inbox for a day, I identified my two peak hours as 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.3) Create a schedule around your peak hours.
When you know your two peak hours, rearrange your calendar to check email at those two times — and only those two times.

By committing to an email schedule, you free yourself up to focus on the important tasks of your day.

(Now what comes next is quite radical and a liitle difficult to implement if you are an employee)
Pro tip: If you’re worried you’ll miss out on an important email, take a tip from Ferriss and set up automatic responders. These automated messages will alert the person reaching out to you that you’re only checking email twice a day and if it’s a truly urgent matter to call or contact you through another channel.Here is a template for your automatic responder.Thanks for the email! I just wanted to let you know that going forward, I will only be checking email twice per day. This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me reaching max productivity. If it’s an emergency, fell free to give me a call.Thanks for understanding. You’re the coolest!

– Mike

4) Stick to your schedule.
Sticking to your new schedule is the hardest part of email batching because like any new habit, it takes time to develop. Be sure to reward yourself every day you stay true to your email schedule.
Improving your productivity starts with identifying your biggest distractions and adjusting. With an average of 121 emails per day to worry about, our inboxes can be our best friend and our worst enemy. By embracing email batching and limiting the time we spend inside our inboxes, we free ourselves up from a tedious task to do more important things.

– – – – – – – – –

Enjoy !